Blog
No-Bin November
Summary
Just a "quick" rant on my 49-day adventure trying to get my trash bin replaced.
In the middle of October, I came back home from work, and discovered that my trash bin was empty. I hoped it was accidentally taken by a neighbor or would otherwise turn up. That was on a monday, AKA Day 1. To be fair to the people I'm about to complain about, I did not call in the issue until Wednesday, so, while I did not have a bin for 49 days, it only took them 46 days to resolve my problem. The woman I spoke to on the first phone call was kind enough to agree that the most likely cause was that my bin fell into the garbage truck as they were emptying it, and they drove off with it. She put in my request for a replacement and assured me a new bin should arrive within 10 days. I asked her how I could get my trash picked up and she said to make sure that it is out by the curb on trash day in black bags.
Nothing much happened until the next trash day, Day 7. I put out my trash in black bags, and assumed that would be that. I was on a call in the morning when trash came, but my wife was in our bedroom, and she watched helplessly as the trash truck drove right by us without paying any mind. She called 311 again, and was told all that could be done was putting in a missed pickup ticket, but hopefully, she said, they might still get back bytoday. They didn't, and I called the next day to confirm that my trash was still on my curb, where it would remain until the next pick up. Now, I'll admit some fault here, I could have bought something to contain this trash temporarily, but at this point the extent of my suffering was unknown. I, foolishly, thought "well, it's already day 4, they might have the trash bin here before the next pickup".
Day 14. Still no bin, some 10 bags of trash on my curb, half have been rotting for a week. Somehow it didn't occur to me that animals might get into these bags, and even more surprising, none had. Last time, I assumed the trash would be taken, but that was last time. Now I'm older, wiserand more prepared. We notice the trash truck skip us, I run outside as he stops at my neighbor's. I get his attention from the driveway, and point out the bags he missed. He waves me off. Not knowing what to do, I run out in front of the truck like a psychopath, and yell at him. He rolls down the window and I try to explain the situation. He says "I never pick up bags". And "you need to call" while gesturing at the logo on the side of the truck. "I did call, they said you'd pick up bags!". We go back and forth for a little bit. until he gives up talking to be and drives away. Now, I would learn that this actually isn't so unreasonable for him. He's the one-man trash crew that only deals with the bins. This is the only truck I've ever seen, but, It turns out, there's a more traditional crew that only comes by when they've been notified of bags that need picking up.
However, they had been notified, they were notified on the first call with 311 when I said I'd have bags, and they were notified again on the missing pickup request. Perhaps they would have showed up later that day anyway, but I, visibly and audibly annoyed at the situation give 311 another call. I explain what happened, that the truck said they won't pick up bags at all, and I get all this new information about a different truck. In addidion to all that information, the woman asks me:
"Well, did you have stickers?"
No, hypothetical, nonexistent, reader, I did not have stickers. I had already called 3 times about this issue, I have asked several times what I need to do, and on the fourth call I am told, for the first time, that there are stickers. Houston, I guess, does some "tags for bags" system when you have extra trash. You can buy stickers and put your bags out and the trash crew will pick them up. It sounds like it's intended for excess trash, and it costs something like 2 bucks per bag (a little more). This is my first little experience with yelling at these people, and I already yelled at the innocent trash truck driver, so in for a penny in for a pound. I don't yell anything crazy, just stuff like "What fucking stickers? Why is this the first time I'm hearing about these? I have two weeks of trash on my curb that I need picked up." She says I can run to Kroger or HEB for stickers, buy them, put them on the bags and then call back. Then, they will put in a new missed pickup request and try to get it resolved today.
One Kroger trip later, I get the stickers on the bags and I give them a call back. She finds that my initial request has been erroneously marked "closed" and re-opens it. Then she puts in a new missed pick up, and I start asking to talk to some supervisor. There's no supervisor in, but she will escalate my initial request, which means, I think, some "Liasion" with the solid waste department will be reaching out to me. I mostly want to complain about the delay, the missed pickups and the fact that apparently I need to buy stickers every week, except nobody wants to tell me about the stickers.
It isn't until after all of this that I start talking with my wife, and she asks the very simple question "why couldn't he just put our bags into the neighbor's bin and then take them?" I don't know the answer to this question because I have been way too pissed to have a good idea. This idea didn't just occur to her either, because about an hour later my very kind trash truck driver (who I was shouting at in the morning) had it too. He came back, used a neighbor's bin, and got all my bags off my curb. A few hours later, I get my first sighting of the second trash truck. The driver was very confused to find my address with no bags, but this day ends well.
The next few weeks are actually pretty mild. I keep buying stickers, putting my bags out and they keep getting picked up. I'm also calling smething like 2-3 times a week to ask:
- Is there any update on my bin
- Why hasn't the Liasion called me?
One of these times I press on talking to someone else and they get me a supervisor. The supervisor is in, I get to chat with her, and she puts in some sort of special request to the Liason's office to respond to me. I have completely lost track of the 6 or 7 tickets I have open now, but one of them is just for the Liason to send an update.
There really were several mild weeks in there where the only problem is that I have to keep calling them without making progress. I ask almost every time if I need the stickers or not, just to see if I can get anything resembling a consisten answer. Mostly, no I don't get anything consistent. Sometimes they think I don't need stickers since, after all, they technically stole my bin and sometimes they tell me I need stickers. I'm pretty convinced I do need stickers because one of the more responsible sounding operators described looking up the instructions from an email. Keep in mind that not only do I not have a bin, the Liasion that I initially asked to speak with on day 14 has still not even reached out to me. And somewhere around week 4 or 5 they recommend I get my city council member involved. I finally leave a voicemail at their office explaining the situation.
So, we go out of town for the week of Day 42's pick up. I get an email from the Liasion's office, and it says "The container delivery department is behind on container delivery". This feels more like a tautology than an explanation, and it offers no additional insight as to when my bin will be replaced. This pointless email also closes the ticket that was created by the supervisor. I'm moderately upset again, so I call and ask them to re-open that ticket because I was supposed to get to talk with this Liasion, not just get an email that tells me zero information. This call goes exactly nowhere, again, and I wind up waiting to deal with it when I get home.
This is the point that I am reminded of the existence of Animals. I don't know if the trash truck left a bag for some reason, or if racoons got to my bags before the trash truck came and they left the already-damaged bags, but I get back home to a rather large mess of exposed trash on my lawn. Not a huge deal just kinda gross, and I'm sure my neighbors weren't happy with me. I get that cleaned up and re-bagged for the next day.
Finally, Day 49 arrives. I got a little bit, I don't really know, bold or stupid or lazy, hard to say, and did not purchase stickers this time around. I figured I was ready to yell at people again, and it'd probably be easier to yell if the bags weren't taken. Sure enough, by midday my bags haven't been picked up, so I call in again. In my mind, I am being totally insane, just ramping everything up to 100. It's not 49 days (which is bad enough, jeez) "It's been 2 months!". She wants to email the Liasion "Respectfully, not good enough, I've escalated like 9 times to that same office and never spoken to anyone!". She tries to call the Liasion who, you'll never believe it, isn't available.
After she had enough, she, kindly, moves me on to the supervisor, and I get to give my whole spiel again. I have, since the beginning, been offering to pick up my bin or buy a bin or whatever it takes and, now, I'm making those offers pretty agressively. She's perfectly nice and reasonable by the way, I really hate that this is what it takes. Eventually, she tries the Liasion again, and after no success, she calls the solid waste department directly and gets me a promise to have the bin delivered by the end of the day. To my surprise, that actually happens.
I have a bin now, it's over. I am suspicious that the solid waste department is running some sort of extortion ring where there's only bins for like 95% of properties and they just move the location of the missing bin like the "holes" in a semiconductor. Stealing one bin to replace a missing one for a small bribe. But hey, that's not my problem anymore, I'm free. Also, you can't convince me that the Liasion exists, I tried for about 40 days to speak with one and was never successful.
Lessons Learned
Apparently, the only way to get city representatives to do anything is to yell at them. I wish I had a better lesson, but I only yelled a little bit for 45 days, to no avail, and then I yelled a lot for one day and voila I have a trash bin. Thanks to all the people I was rude to, I didn't mean any of it.